A BIRD'S IQ: Innovation, Intelligence, and Problem Solving in the Avian World

A BIRD'S IQ: Innovation, Intelligence, and Problem Solving in the Avian World
LOUIS LEFEBVRE (tr. Pablo Strauss)
Greystone Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$28.00 all editions, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: For readers of Jennifer Ackerman comes a captivating exploration of avian intelligence that challenges traditional wisdom about animal cognition.

Surveying a wide variety of birds, including crows, finches, tits, and parrots, Louis Lefebvre, a world-renowned expert in animal behaviour, describes the remarkable innovations and problem-solving abilities of species often dismissed as ‘featherbrains’. From crows using cars as nutcrackers to cockatoos crafting tools, Lefebvre reveals how birds exhibit creativity, social learning, and even cultural transmission — traits once thought to be exclusive to humans and other primates.

Blending his decades of scientific research with engaging anecdotes, Lefebvre examines the evolutionary forces that have shaped avian intelligence. He explores how birds adapt to urban environments, innovate in response to challenges, and pass down knowledge across generations. This goldmine of bird behaviour yields an ‘innovation quotient’ widely used by researchers to measure and rank how innovative a bird species is. Using his encyclopaedic knowledge, Lefebvre answers questions such as:

When a bird species learns a new technique, how do their innovations spread?

Why is research on bird cognition being used to train AI models and even robots?

What makes certain birds endlessly innovative while others stubbornly repeat the same behaviors?

When a bird species learns a new technique, how do their innovations spread? Why is research on bird cognition being used to train AI models and even robots? What makes certain birds endlessly innovative while others stubbornly repeat the same behaviours? With vivid storytelling and groundbreaking insights, A A Bird’s IQ invites readers to reconsider their perceptions, celebrating the ingenuity of birds and highlighting the interconnectedness of all intelligent life.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I loved this read. I am, as I think those familiar with my writing over the years will know, a corvidophile...crows particularly but ravens and magpies as well...as I find their intelligence palpable. It is obvious to me that I am in the presence of a sentient being when I'm around corvids, there's that recognition of fellowship that really can't be denied. Or I can't deny it anyway.

Author Lefebvre seems to have had a similar experience though not specifically with corvids. His research into the intelligence of birds is built on a much longer tradition of inquiry into the subject than I ever suspected. It's a big part of my pleasure in reading this book to learn as much as I did about the history of research into avian intelligence. It felt as though I was sitting in an armchair next to him, having a wide-ranging conversation about science and its history wherein he answered my questions without my actually vocalizing them. It sounds fanciful, I know, but it was my emotional experience of this kind of intimacy that made the read so different from other popularizations of important scientific study.

It really isn't a bit surprising that I'd have this experience while reading A Bird’s IQ when you learn that Author Lefebvre is also a novelist...one nominated twice for Canada's Governor General's Award for French-language fiction, so clearly possessed of solid narrative-creation chops. I liked the experience I had learning about the intelligence of dinosaurs which is where I'm clearly going to go since I'm still an eight-year-old when it comes to dinosaurs. (And yes, birds are unquestionably dinosaurs.) It can, however, lead to a bit of prolixity about what the kids (ie anyone under fifty) seem to like calling "side quests" into matters like a scientist's name-change, or the challenges of gathering usable data from birding-centered magazines published in England between the World Wars. Fascinating, but better left in the source notes.

If I have a moment of...hesitation, let's call it, about some of Author Lefebvre's contentious assertions about cultural transmission of knowledge in bird populations, it's one that Author Lefebvre foresaw and forestalled by couching his contention of this fact in careful terms. The anecdotal evidence for this method of learning in bird populations is voluminous. It's not rigorous scientific data, and Author Lefebvre, to his credit, never tries to present it as such. He also very specifically states he does not share Rupert Sheldrake's more controversial ideas about how that kind of knowledge transmission could take place. As I am a bit uncomfortable with presenting that body of knowledge as scientific myownself, I am in harmony with Author Lefebvre on this point.

As I am very much a satisfied reader of this book, I want to assure all who read this review that it's not perfect in my eyes, or in the author's. It is an interim progress report on a career's-worth of experience, knowledge-gathering, and synthesis. It's well presented. It's well sourced. It's mae to bring fundamentals of the topic to broad attention, and couched in language that does this unintimidatingly well. It also affords the author's scientific peers access to his resources and his thinking leadiing to the conclusions presented...all in the same sentences and style. And, of the greatest value to both audiences, Author Lefebvre does not present his case as closed, does not claim a unique and conversation-ending breakthrough is in the text.

He is too sensible of work needing to be done and too respectful of the contributors to the overall field of research into intelligence. I was never more surprised in the read than when I learned how much two-way influence into robotics and "AI" there was. A story of how we got to where we are, and how much where we are has resonances beyond the obvious, in using our own intelligence to understand intelligence, expand its impact, and...I hope...gain humility about ourselves by learning about and from those unlike us.